Hey, I know u weren't giving me flak I just added that bit in the hope that some Comp Sci undergrads might read it... I can't count the number of times I seen people use fancy data structures and attempt to optimize every line of code, only to end up with an unreadable mess which is actually slower than had they just done post-optimization on some simple code...

A classic example from my FPHG would be jumping in using a Boyer-Moore scanner, a Hash Table or a Heap for the table list, Regular Expression library for the string matching, etc. It turned out about 30% of my speedup came from reordering the logical evaluation order of 2/3 if statements and removing a strlen() call from a for loop!

Juk

As I mentioned v0.04 can do "realtime" writing of logs now. I guess this can be used by botters, but it can also have legit uses, and PHT was writing in "realtime", so I added this feature.

Please don't use this unless you have a reason too, as it is slower and can in theory miss the end of hands (and write 1/2 finished hands). The non-realtime version will only write fully complete and 'sanity checked' hands...

Here are some notes on how to use the "realtime" feature and some ideas on parameters you could try using (I not using this myself, so can't say for sure what will be best...). I added this sub-thread so I don't get asked endless times in PMs how to use the "realtime" feature...

NOTE: The easiest way to enter the command line options for FPHG is just to edit the run.bat file I included in the zip.

FreePHG -r -d 500

Would be: Realtime, delay of 500ms

FreePHG -r -d 300 -p 1

Would be: Realtime, delay of 300ms, above average priority

FreePHG -r -d 100 -p 2

Would be: Realtime, delay of 100ms, high priority

NOTE: Just be careful if setting priority higher than 0 (normal), as can cause OS to go wrong. But I am assuming you would not want to miss any data (like PHT was doing), so uping FPHG's priority should make it work before all else.


If you want to write .txt files in realtime, then use the "-e" option:

FreePHG -r -d 500 -e txt

Would be: Realtime, delay of 500ms, extension of .txt


You will just have to experiment and see which parameters help and balance CPU use with possibly missed end of hands. Tell me how you get on if you use this option and post your results/parameter combinations here, as this will help others who want to try to use the realtime option...

Juk

Mine just hovers around 6%!

I know, it's sweet compared to the old versions - my crappy system is thanking me already! LOL

Peeps with new 3GHz+ machines and v0.04 must be getting nearly 0% CPU use I guessing?

I also just looked and it "seems" like I am getting alot more hands than I used to (I have a feeling the old near 100% CPU version was missing a ton of hands, but not sure yet...).

Juk

Juk, fantastic. Many thanks.

Juk,

Does FPHG overwrite or append the .hhf files if tableswith the same names are mined at different days/times?

I ask because I have used it for several days and am missing .hhf files. On further examination, there are a few from 3 days ago that are relatively small, a few from a 2 days ago ranging from fairly small to large, and some from last night that range from fairly small to very large. Each day, I have mined at the same time for the same length of time. None of the table names are repeated, which is why i suspect that FPHG might be appending the existing files. Hopefully, this is correct.

Look inside the .hhf files. What days were the hands?
-Sam

Yes, it just keeps appending to the end of the files with the same name. So if you mine the same table multiple times over several days, it will just grow into one big file.

Juk

I also noticed that I am picking up almost twice as many hands with the latest version. At least that's what I remember when I look at the status window in PT. It's set to import every 30 mins and used to pick up at most ~200 hands, now I am pushing to ~400!

Can anyone confirm? I am only mining 10 tables at a time.

I am not 100% sure yet, but I seem to be getting many more hands in terms of MB's appearing on my disk. Maybe for those of us with slower CPUs this has helped alot more than I could have predicted?

Sadly Party decided it was gona lockup and eat near 100% CPU last night... No idea why it does this if left for long periods of time, but seems to be something to do with when iWitness tries to open an 11th table, and then Party just decides it's gona munch all your CPU time...

I had used the "low priority mode" for FPHG - so when I woke up today FPHG was getting about 1% CPU, while Party was just eating all the rest. Hopefully when I try again tonight this wont happen, and I can get a better measure of how mnay more hands I am getting with the optimized version.

Juk

Hi, I downloaded the newest versiona and when I open my PT and party games it still isnt recording the HH's. Sorry I am computer illiterate is there anything else I need to do? When I go to import hands it says 0 new hands imported.

Don't go by PT to see if it's working, look for the HHF files on your hard drive. They should be in the folder where placed and ran FreePHG.

If there are .HHF files in that folder, named after the poker table names, it's recording HHF's.

Now you have to go to PT and get it to import those recorded HHF's from THAT folder, or you need to move FreePHG into your Party folder and run it from there, because that's where Poker Tracker usually expects those HHF files to be.

did you pull v3 off the site? cause its comming up as not found

I took it down bc people were still trying to dl it. V0.04 is available (check the post at the top of the thread).

Juk

I have no clue about what you are saying there, but it sounds good anyway. Thx for the new version, which is finally very usable. Good job!

FPHG now has it's own homepage. I did this just to try to stop all the problems with dead links and old versions.

I also uploaded v0.04b, but it is unlikely to be helpful other than to a very few people.

Changes for v0.04b

(1) Can now read from multiple party clients running in the same user area.

(2) The "-r" option wasn't being recognized and is fixed now - this is only of interest to people who want to use the "real-time" option.

Juk

PS: Sorry for the little heart symbol, but had to try to make this sub-thread stand out, so that people will look here for the link in future...

Juk-

Thanks for the creation of this product and making it available to those of us here at 2p2 - I just got into Party and after purchasing PT, was very excited to see that there was a way to use PT to the fullest extent and be able to grab Observed hands. Thanks again and I look forward to reading all the posts on this page so far and in the future as more are added.

Ooops, I was wrong. I didn't realize that HHF were double counted. Apparently there as some "empty" ones being created in PartyPoker directory for each table that I observe. Still, I do believe I am picking up more hands than in the past.

From an email I just got, possibly relavent to others, so posted here:

Does anybody else have problems with this and think this would be a useful feature to add?

I could easily add an option to ignore any hand histories which are your own and are getting saved in the HH folder by party?

Also, no need to enter your nick - I can just scan for the string "Dealt to" and use that to detect HH where you are playing yourself...

Juk

I don't think it's necessary, or deriable. . .

PT imports my played hands from the Party directory, and it only gets my played hands. This is great for my personal DB.

I have PT get "observed" hands from the directory where I have the observed HHF's go, and they go into "obs" databases. I want duplicates of my hands going in there, because for every hand I play, there are 6-9 other players playing that hand, too, and I want them in the obs data, because I have my HUD only pull from obs - not from my played hands.

I think this is the best way, but individual choice will dictate what others want.

I would find it useful to not have hands that I play go to my observed DB as well as my main DB.

I sent the email thinking that I didnt want hands I played going into the observed database. Now Im noticing that this might not be a good option. Unless Im missing something I cant view the data at the same time and neither can gametime+ I havent tried the other hud so im not sure about it. I think what mogubu is doing is what I was trying to setup.

btw mogubu how did you set that up do you just run both timers? the auto import and the generic?

PA-hud can use more than one database at once.

I cannot only use my observed DB for stats, as I play on sites that can only import hands into my main db.